X-Men '97 Season 2 Episode 2 Easter Eggs: X-Force, Generation X and a Casket That Points to Gambit

Apocalypse is back in season 2 of X-Men '97, and episode 2, "A Force to Be Reckoned With," is packed with Easter eggs, details and references to the original animated series. That force is X-Force, and I'm going through it scene by scene for everything you might have missed and what it might mean for our favorite mutants.

Season 2 opened with its first three episodes on Disney Plus. This one is kind of the first big writing credit for its two writers, and it was directed by the same director as the premiere.

Cable's recap of season 1 hints at why Jubilee and Roberto stayed in 1997

The previously on X-Men is said by Cable this time. We get a recap from season 1: Roberto talks about how his mom handed him over to the Prime Sentinels, then he and Jubilee kiss, then they fight Bastion. Asteroid M blows up and Jubilee is sent spiraling away in the blast. Roberto catches her, which he'll do again in this episode.

The fact that they were back on the ground by the time the asteroid blew up probably explains why they weren't also pulled through time. Then we see Jean and Scott saying goodbye to Cable. Asteroid M blows up, and on the ground Jubilee, Dr. Cooper, Roberto and Forge look up at the explosion.

The opening chase introduces members of Generation X

The episode opens in present day 1997 with a shot of a playground. One swing on a swing set is still swaying in the breeze, as if a childhood activity was cut short because of everything mutant kids are dealing with since the X-Men went away. Then we see a group of five mutant kids running through the woods. Some of these are the kids who will go on to become Generation X, the next gen superhero team that first appeared in Uncanny X-Men number 318 in 1994.

Here we see Monet St. Croix, also known as M or Penance. She's the one in the black tank top who transforms into the red skinned, spiky haired mutant. She has heightened senses and abilities and is telepathic. Wing is the one in the blue jacket and yellow shirt, and he can fly. The one with the pink hair is Quentin Quire, aka Kid Omega, an omega level telepath. We see a few other members of Generation X later in the episode.

X-Factor is rounding up mutant kids for the government

As the kids run, a spotlight shines down, and we're about to get another non-X-Men team. The kids reach the safe haven they were going for, the X-Mansion, but Xavier's school is still abandoned and in disrepair. They're found by X-Factor, who we saw in the original series episode "Cold Comfort."

X-Factor here is made up of Lorna Dane, aka Polaris, Magneto's daughter, who has his power of metal manipulation, and Alex Summers, aka Havok, who is Scott's brother. In the animated series they weren't raised by their parents and they didn't know they were brothers. There was a fun detail, though, where their powers wouldn't work on one another and they were both confused. Multiple Man is the one who drops into the forest after the kids run through. Wolfsbane and Strong Guy are also there. In the original series, Forge was the one leading them.

Havok tells the kids, "We're definitely the good guys," which mirrors what Cyclops said to Sunspot in the season 1 premiere. Unlike the X-Men, X-Factor worked for the US government, and here it seems they're rounding up mutant kids, claiming it's for their own protection since violence against mutant youth is on the rise. On a TV news report, Havok and Polaris take in Jonathan Starsmore, Chamber, another member of Generation X. He can release energy blasts.

Jubilee and Roberto's arcade scene is full of original series callbacks

As Jubilee watches the TV, there's a menu on the wall next to her, and one of the items is mall babe chili fries. That's a reference to a Jubilee line from the two part pilot of the original series, "Night of the Sentinels." Jubilee is voiced by Holly Chou. In the original, she was voiced by Alyson Court, who came back last season in a different role.

Jubilee and Roberto are in a mall arcade, maybe the same one from that original pilot. Jubilee is annoyed that they're not doing more to help mutants and that Roberto is playing arcade games. In that "Cold Comfort" episode I mentioned earlier, Iceman Bobby Drake talks about how Polaris, his girlfriend at the time, wanted to do more for mutantkind after both of them left the X-Men. Jubilee brings up Polaris' former X-Men status later on to guilt her.

When Cable shows up, he eats chili fries and an ice cream float while he talks, which is probably way better food than is available in his timeline. Jubilee and Roberto have luggage with them, which means they've probably been hiding out and on the run since the events at the end of last season.

Cable's Apocalypse dossier hides comics creator nods and the Legacy Virus

Cable recruits them for his mission and hands Jubilee the folder we saw last episode, and we can see some new details here. In the upper left corner, a photo of Fabian Cortez sits by a photo of the worship temple where he tried to force Jubilee to be Apocalypse's vessel in the original series episode "The Fifth Horseman." On a sticky note is a list of Apocalypse's followers with F. Cortez, then Caliban. He was a Morlock that Cortez turned into one of Apocalypse's hounds, not the cyber hounds we saw last episode. Three of the hounds are in the photo in the bottom right in the red and black suits.

Under that are the names of the Four Horsemen in this time period. Only Warren Worthington was able to break free from Apocalypse's control. There's also a photo of those Four Horsemen flying from the episode "Come the Apocalypse." Under an FBI wanted note is a sticky note with names that are mostly obscured, but the ones I can read are L. Simonson and J. Guice. The first is a reference to Louise Simonson, a comic book writer who co-created Cable. The second is for Jackson Guice, a Marvel Comics artist.

On the other page, in addition to what we saw last episode, there's a note that reads Legacy Virus. That was a plague Apocalypse engineered to wipe out humans and mutants in the two part "Time Fugitives" arc. Above the poster reading En Sabah Nur is an image of him from an artifact that's the same one from the episode "Obsession," found by Archangel when he became obsessed with finding and killing Apocalypse.

The X-Force opening remixes the original intro, with Cable in Cyclops' place

Jubilee asks Cable if this new team has a name, and we get an awesome alternate opening that mirrors the original. Instead of Storm and Rogue flying in with the Blackbird, it's Archangel and Sunspot with a different aircraft, the plane Cable flies throughout the episode. Inside are Jubilee, Psylocke and Cable, with Cable standing just like his dad was in the original opening. Instead of the X-Men logo, it's X-Force. Then comes the lineup, the explosion, and Cable instead of Cyclops shooting at Sentinels, followed by Jubilee, Sunspot, Psylocke and Archangel.

We get some new images mixed in with the old ones, like Jubilee in a shot from the "Motendo" episode and Sunspot powering up. The Generation X kids do the run up to the chain link fence that Jubilee did in the original series and Sunspot did in season 1. X-Factor assembles, and Apocalypse and Mystique convert Warren, from "The Cure" and "Come the Apocalypse." Apocalypse catching Archangel is from "Obsession." Jubilee trains with Psylocke, which explains why Jubilee has such awesome fighting moves later in this episode.

Then the villains run in from the right: Apocalypse, his three hounds and his three horsemen. Caught in the middle are young mutants being pursued by a Sentinel. The girl with the multicolored hair is the one we saw playing on Genosha in "Remember It" who could turn into a parrot, and Chamber is there too. X-Force runs in from the left, Cable clenches his fist in the place regularly occupied by Charles, and Apocalypse takes the place of Magneto. They all crash together and form the X-Force logo, which gets electrified.

War's mind points to Gambit as Apocalypse's new Death

Then we're in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil during Carnival. Psylocke uses her mental powers to try to find War as Archangel flies over the crowd. Jubilee and Sunspot dance just like they did in the club in season 1. They spot War walking through the crowd and give chase, and Jubilee and Sunspot do a team up move similar to the fastball special.

The group ties War to a tree and Psylocke probes his mind. Charles usually avoided probing someone's mind without consent, so Jubilee is uncomfortable with this, and she's about to get a whole lot less comfortable. Psylocke sees Apocalypse praising War as War brings in a casket. This is almost definitely Gambit's casket that we saw in "Bright Eyes." With Archangel out of his control, Apocalypse needs a new Death, and that's going to be Gambit.

Apocalypse says "we shall forge a new world in fire and blood," which he said in the original series. Then Psylocke comes across a wall of diamonds blocking her. Archangel kills War after explaining to Jubilee that he can't be saved. The only reason Archangel was able to break free from Apocalypse's control was because Rogue drained him.

Emma Frost's clue leads X-Force into an X-Factor trap

Jubilee realizes the diamond wall and psychic block must be the work of Emma Frost, so they visit her in a nightclub in London. Frost tells X-Force that War needed her help to smuggle cargo into Switzerland. When they get there, they find the conversion tech Apocalypse uses to turn mutants into Horsemen, and it's more advanced than what he used on War. Again, they're really laying out the clues that Gambit was recently raised and then converted.

This is all a trap, and X-Factor is there waiting for them. In the fight, Archangel sends his metal wing blades at the group and Polaris uses her metal control powers to redirect them, then Psylocke throws up a mental shield. Strong Guy tells Cable, "Don't bring a gun to a fist fight," a great twist on the actual saying about not bringing a knife to a gun fight. Also, I think Cable has no clue he's actually fighting his uncle whenever he's facing down Havok. Strong Guy is voiced by Adrian Hough, who also voices Nightcrawler.

Jubilee's capture puts her face to face with Polaris and Havok

Most of X-Force escapes, but Jubilee gets nabbed and brought to the government detainment center in Washington, D.C., where all the mutant kids wear power dampening collars. Polaris and Havok interrogate her. After Polaris and Iceman left the X-Men, they broke up, and Polaris got together with Havok after she joined the team.

Jubilee calls Havok a knockoff Cyclops, and again, this would sting way more if he knew that was his brother. Polaris always had a strong sense of duty and responsibility, and Jubilee appeals to that here, asking if Charles would be proud of what she's doing.

The detention cells are full of future Generation X and Stepford Cuckoos

They put Jubilee in a cell along with the other mutant kids. We see the kids from the opening scene, and Quentin Quire is in a cell with a bald kid. This is Everett Thomas, aka Synch, another member of Generation X, who can copy other mutants' powers when he's near them. Across from that cell is a girl with antlers, Lin Li, Nature Girl, who can communicate with plants and animals. The pink kid with bubbles on his head is Artie Maddicks. He's a telepath, and at some point he'll go on to train with X-Factor. With him is Dust, Sooraya Qadir, who can transform into a dust cloud.

The blonde girls with the pigtails are the Stepford Cuckoos: Celeste, Esme, Irma, Sophie and Phoebe. We only see three here, but later on when they're outside you can see all five. They're actually clones of Emma Frost. The little alien looking girl is Maggie. She has x-ray vision, and her story is terrible and tragic.

In the original series episode "Have Yourself a Morlock Little X-Mas," Jubilee bonded with a green, big eyed Morlock girl, so she's always had a soft spot for downtrodden little mutant girls. Seeing Maggie with the collar on and terrified sends her over the edge. Luckily, she got through to Polaris, who shuts down the cameras and deactivates her collar, allowing Jubilee to try to fight her way out of the facility.

Jubilee's breakout shows how far Cable and Psylocke's training has taken her

And fight her way out she does. There's a very cool moment where the blaring alarm leads into the music on her headphones, Veruca Salt's "Volcano Girls." As she fights, it's evident how far she's come in that arena, thanks to Cable and Psylocke's training. At one point she blasts her power from the bottoms of her feet to push off a wall, a move we haven't seen her do before.

Jubilee frees the kids, and we see that Glob Herman is there, the pink skeleton blob guy we saw last season on Genosha. The green spiky mutant is Anole, and Megan Gwynn and the girl who could turn into a parrot are there too. Jubilee's shoes turn into rollerblades. She gets clotheslined when she's almost free, looks over and sees Maggie, too afraid to escape on her own. She fights off more goons and then puts Maggie on her back. There's a famous comics cover by Alex Ross that has Angel flying up with Maggie in his arms, so this girl is always being carried places.

When they get outside, Jubilee hands Maggie off to Nature Girl and fights some more. Cable and the others arrive, and Roberto is such a proud boyfriend, and Cable is such a proud papa, seeing Jubilee fight like this. Archangel picks up a bird looking kid, Barnell Bohusk, also known as Beak, one of the stranger looking X-Men characters. He has birdlike powers, like hollow bones, talons and the ability to glide.

Val Cooper, consistently on the wrong side of things when it comes to mutants, stops Jubilee, who rollerblades off the helicarrier and is caught by Roberto, a move he also pulled last season. Cooper then gives a press conference denouncing X-Force and praising X-Factor.

Cable's flashback shows young Nathan sending the X-Men home

Archangel says that where they're going is no place for kids, and Cable says kids are tougher than he thinks. It cuts to him as a kid, young Nathan, getting his arm upgraded by Ship.

Ship's field computer cube tells him that he needs to send the X-Men back to their time. When Jean and Scott don't want to leave him, Nathan makes the hard decision to send them anyway.

Which detail from "A Force to Be Reckoned With" stood out most to you?